/**
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.kie.api.runtime.process;

/**
 * A workflow process instance represents one specific instance of a
 * workflow process that is currently executing.  It is an extension
 * of a <code>ProcessInstance</code> and contains all runtime state
 * related to the execution of workflow processes.
 *
 * @see org.kie.api.runtime.process.ProcessInstance
 */
public interface WorkflowProcessInstance
    extends
    ProcessInstance,
    NodeInstanceContainer {

    /**
     * Returns the value of the variable with the given name.  Note
     * that only variables in the process-level scope will be searched.
     * Returns <code>null</code> if the value of the variable is null
     * or if the variable cannot be found.
     *
     * @param name the name of the variable
     * @return the value of the variable, or <code>null</code> if it cannot be found
     */
    Object getVariable(String name);

    void setVariable(String name, Object value);

}
